King Country: From a Buick 8
Some brief announcements:
My good friend Rios de la Luz is hosting an online workshop March 8th.
Want to write with other creatives? Want inspiration for poetry, prose, or fiction?
WRITING THE WILD will focus on exploring the wilderness in our imaginations, non-linear paths into a story, mixing nature into writing to paint vivid imagery, exploring ways to add magical realism into our work to give stories more depth.
This workshop is generative, meaning, we write together within time limits of 10 to 20 minutes per prompt and create on the spot.
All writers will receive a packet with prompts and guides for longer exercises which focus on magical realism.
Classes are recorded and recordings will be available for 30 days.
WHEN: March 8th, 2025
WHERE: Online
TIME: 9:00AM PST to 1:00 PM PST
COST: $40 to $60
(Sliding scale)
If you are a writer with any interest in developing your craft in a generative group setting, don’t miss this. More info/sign up HERE.
I’m joining a podcast to discuss epic fantasy series! The first episode is releasing on March 10th. In it, we’re covering the first ten chapters of Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. You can follow along here or wait until the pages go live on spotify and apple and so on. But if you want to read one of the most important grimdark series along with me, hop on for the ride!
More of King Country:
After five King books, I begin to think I know who he is as a writer. His books are big sprawling affairs far more interested in the people than they are in the horror held within. Even if that horror is why we’re all here flipping through pages, King knows that the horror only matters to the extent that we care about those witnessing this terrible no good very bad time.
I do think King has far more in common with 19th century writers than he does with most of the 20th century writers you might expect. Dickens is alive and well in King, which is really never what I expected to find when first I picked up one of his books.
From a Buick 8 is a bit different, though. Not so much in terms of its focus, but it is structurally the most adventurous of King’s novels. While the other five I’ve read are very typical in what you’d expect, From a Buick 8 is an old fashioned frame narrative but also a bottle episode.
For an explanation of a bottle episode, take a look at this clip from Community.
Almost the entire novel takes place in a Police barracks in the early 2000s while members of Troop D describe how a Buick 8 showed up and what’s happened since then. Largely, this comes from Sandy Dearborn, the sergeant, telling the story to Ned Wilcox, a high schooler who started unofficially working there as a dispatcher after his father, Curtis, was killed by a drunk driver.
Curtis was one of the cops of Troop D but also one who had one of the strongest fascinations with this Buick 8.
It showed up mysteriously and every investigation into it only leads to more mysteries and then it begins causing its own strange mysteries. And not just mysteries.
But it’s the structure here that’s interesting. The story sort of floats around the car. And I do mean around. Everything we hear is only to elaborate on the Buick 8 and the effect is one of swirling history interacting with the present, where they’re all sitting around telling Ned about this strange car that showed up from nowhere, left by some stranger in black.
Now, the stranger in black may be a red herring, especially since I’ve never read King’s Dark Tower series, but I know a man dressed in black is a central figure there.
Is this related to that?
No idea.
But it got my brain itching.
And much of this book really gets your old noodle tangled, makes that itch grow fiercer and fiercer. Because for quite a while, nothing seems especially dire or even especially important. We’re living the lives of these people, inhabiting their world. And while the car sets off some otherworldly lightquakes and causes the temperature to drop wildly, it’s not until were pretty deep into all this that something leaves the Buick.
I don’t often feel fear when reading King’s books—at least not so far—but this was pretty alarming! I won’t hop over to spoiler territory, but this moment cracks the world open. More than that, it pierces through the lives of Troop D, leading to disasters and horrors and obsessions. And obsessions, as most know, often lead to a certain flavor of disaster.
Much of the tension here seems like it would dissolve because of the frame narrative. After all, we know who’s alive and who’s not, yeah? But King does something here that far too few framers do, which is to use the present day as a narrative tool rather than simply somewhere to hang a narrative.
What I mean by that is that many writers have a character looking back into the past and that’s the whole story. It’s a story gone and done and the narrator simply goes on living once they’re done telling their tale.
King, though, makes a strong interaction between the present and past, between who someone was and who they became, who they are now.
Most importantly, the climax of the novel doesn’t simply happen in the past but relies upon the past and present smashing together in a harrowing moment.
At the heart of the novel, though, is this obsession with an object. How the object becomes a symbol, becomes a totem. Even when it seems out of their control, Troop D never asks for help. Never enlists scientists to come investigate, to have the government step in and sort this out.
Why?
Well, because it’s theirs.
And as silly as that answer is, especially given all that they go through, I find it one of the most human explanations I’ve seen. And this humanity it really what makes this book shine. Sure, you show up for the horrors, the otherworldly dread, but you stay because of these people, because of their humanity.
From a Buick 8 isn’t my favorite King novel, but it’s the most adventurous I’ve seen him. For all that this is a tiny story, a bottle episode, it feels nearly as ambitious as It. Sure, it’s not trying to capture the entire world in a novel, but it is taking the minute and exploding it into the whole universe.
This stupid inert truck in a shack.
The whole world.
The very universe.
I’ve described what I see as the heavy thumbprint of James Joyce upon King, but here is another thumbprint where I least expected it. And I know no one wants to talk about King in the same sentence as someone like James Joyce, but is this not exactly what Joyce aimed for?
To turn a single day into all existence. To turn a single city into all the world.
ULYSSES
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
Many people have recommended other King novels to me while I begin this journey. I’ll probably include most of them, unless I end up abandoning this whole project early due to disinterest or disgust, but the ones listed below are the only ones I’ll promise on writing about.
Here’s the order I’ll be tackling King’s novels. I’d like to give you a reason why this is the order and not some other order or why only these books and not a bunch of other ones, but I’m trusting to Jayson Young as my guide.
From a Buick 8
Revival
Firestarter
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
Pet Sematary
The Long Walk
The Stand
The Dark Tower I-VII
Free novels:
You're aware that when you get to The Stand, you'll have a decision to make, right? The choice whether to read the original 1978 version, or the unabridged version from 1990 will be critical. And you'll need to let us know which one you chose!
You will be continuing howling earth right? It's been a blast so far. Last 2 books were my favorite books I've read last year.